Friday, September 12, 2008

Not quite as dry as usual...

The area where I live is normally pretty dry--not as arid as, say, Las Cruces, NM, where my sister and I once spent almost an entire, busy, tea-slugging, blistering-hot day not peeing at all because the place was so dry our bodies refused to turn loose of any moisture. Anyway, it's pretty dry here; we get an average of 18" of precipitation per year. Not yesterday, oh my goodness no--in the space of 24 hours, we got around eight (that's 8!) inches of rain, and the landscape is way too flat around here to handle that much rain in so short a timespan. Playa lakes filled to capacity, businesses in the worst-hit areas flooded, cars were swept off the road, water rushed in torrents at every intersection, and nearly every street had developed twin rivers running down either side. A guy from my office spent three grueling hours trying to get home yesterday; his little old Ford Aspire (which aspires to be a real car) stalled four times and was almost washed away once. He called in to work this morning, determined not to drive again until the city dried out sufficiently that he wouldn't be taking his life in his hands. Turned out he didn't have to--every school in the city was closed, including the university where we work! Now that's a bad rainy spell!

I had no real trouble driving home yesterday, unlike my workmate, although every loonie in town was out in force, driving as if the streets were bone-dry--darting in front of other cars & so forth. Lord, people are dumb....I drove like an old lady all the way home and was very relieved when I got there.

So I heard on the clock radio this morning that my place of business was closed for the day and I happily snuggled in for another two hours of sleep (well, dozing, anyway--my cat was eager to get outside for her morning constitutional, since the rain had finally stopped, and she did her best to stave off the sandman by meowing or walking across me or both every few minutes). After breakfast, I settled in for some online game-playing and email. Got the email taken care of, but then something in my CPU went crackle-pop-burn and that was it for the computer. Unable to fix the problem myself, I had to hang on the phone with India for three hours. The verdict is probably a dead hard drive (I've never had one go bad on me all at once, so I can't verify that that's correct). Then I spent another fun three hours getting my old laptop (which I'd almost completely wiped in preparation for selling it) to work for me again, including loading a year's worth of updates. It was a rather frustrating day, but everything's working now--well, except for my desktop PC, and that'll work in a few days. And the fix is within warranty, thank goodness.

Poor Minnie, she hasn't gotten much attention today. I'll make it up to her with laser tag & snuggles tonight. :)